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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Hamas slams UN over Holocaust classes in Gaza |
| 2009-09-01 |
| [Al Arabiya Latest] Hamas condemned the United Nations on Sunday for what it said was a plan to teach Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip about the Holocaust in its history books as Israel's prime minister slammed three Jewish religious schools for refusing to admit Ethiopian Jews. In an open letter to a senior U.N. official, the Islamist movement called on the agency to withdraw plans for history books in U.N. schools as it was an obvious bone of contention to teach Palestinian children about an event that lead to the creation of the state of Israel. A spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which educates some 200,000 refugee children in Gaza, said the Holocaust was not on its current curriculum but would not comment on Hamas's statement that it was about to change. Hamas said it believed UNRWA was about to start using a text for 13-year-olds that included a chapter on the Holocaust. "We refuse to let our children study a lie invented by the Zionists," Hamas' Popular Committees for Refugees said in its letter to local UNRWA chief John Ging. UNRWA spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna said: "There is no mention of the Holocaust in the current syllabus." Asked if UNRWA planned to change that, he declined to comment. Hamas's official spokesman in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, said he did not want to discuss the history of the Holocaust but said: "Regardless of the controversy, we oppose forcing the issue of the so-called Holocaust onto the syllabus, because it aims to reinforce acceptance of the occupation of Palestinian land." In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, run by the Western-backed Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas, teachers said there was no official guidance on teaching about the Holocaust. Arabs resent the way world powers reacted to the Holocaust by supporting the establishment of Israel in 1948, a move that took land from the Palestinians and left more than half of them refugees. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 Back in the late sixties I briefly dated a Jewish girl who's father was a concentration camp survivor. After seeing his arm tattoo there could be no doubt, in my mind, as to the reality of the Holocaust. |
| Posted by: WolfDog 2009-09-01 11:05 |
| #2 "...so-called Holocaust.." I, for one, have seen too many of those so-called tattoos on old men and women to stand for it to be referred to as the 'so-called Holocaust." Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2009-09-01 09:33 |
| #1 The only thing "palestinian" children need to know is how to press a button. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2009-09-01 04:00 |